


if the heavens ever did speak

by transishimaru



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: AU - no Ishida, Drabble, Ghosts, M/M, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 13:30:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18966220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transishimaru/pseuds/transishimaru
Summary: we were born sick, you heard them say it.





	if the heavens ever did speak

**Author's Note:**

> i just kind of wrote this on tumblr as a writing exercise and now i'm flinging it at you.  
> title from "take me to church" by hozier.

his life has always been a kind of race of one life-ruining decision after another, so his death is - more or less - to be expected. it’s the kind of thing he could have approached nonchalantly, if taka would just realize he wasn’t worth the arguments and let things be. but even after he’s shown his cards, admitted his guilt, lined up for the firing squad, he is  _still_  knee-deep in denial.

there is no part of this mondo enjoys. there is no quantifiable “hardest” or “worst” part about it, because every single second feels just as terrifying as the next. he acts out of impulse and a lack of self-control and he doesn’t sleep and he more or less just waits around for them to find him, and he thinks, to himself, ‘the worst part is that i have killed a living being again’. and then once that’s sunk in and he’s started to feel so terrible that everything is numb, he thinks, ‘the worst part is now ishimaru will hate me’.

about the last part, he’s wrong.

the worst part is that he  _doesn’t_. the worst part is that he beats down every accusation until he’s almost physically falling apart from the strain of it all. the worst part is that even when he’s accepted what mondo’s done he doesn’t even hate him for it. the worst part is watching makoto try to hold him back from doing something dumber. the worst part is hearing that he voted for himself. and again, all of that absolutely pales in comparison to the absolute pinnacle of worst parts, which is the fact that the last thing he ever hears is kiyotaka ishimaru screaming for him as he’s dying.

* * *

dying, itself, isn’t that bad.

* * *

there’s a pretty big disparity between what mondo thinks he knows, and what he realizes he actually knows when he wakes up. it’s like when your alarm clock goes off, but you don’t wake up, you just hear the buzzing in your dreams. that’s what taka’s screaming sounds like, and he is trying so desperately to think and he can’t over the sound. and then, it’s cut off, abrupt, and he knows that it’s because taka has run out of voice. and somehow, that’s just worse.

that’s it. it only ever gets worse. 

he doesn’t have that moment where he thinks he’s alive and the slow, horrifying memory that he is, in fact, dead that he’s read about so much in fiction. he knows that he’s dead. it just doesn’t help matters much. he thinks he’s stuck where he is, facing white walls and monochrome tile and somehow it all looks more bleak than it did this morning. 

he’s wrong, but what else is new? he can move, just not like he did before. he can’t move on his own terms. 

* * *

if he thinks it was bad before, it is absolutely nothing. not even death is a reprieve from the consequences of his actions. 

it’s funny, how daiya used to say that when people died, they went to sleep and never woke up. it’s more like being awakened, and never being allowed to go back to sleep. here’s a fun fact: kiyotaka doesn’t either. 

his body (or what passes for it now) is tethered to every minute movement kiyotaka makes, and it’s like being a partner in a dance but you are blindfolded and also deaf and mute and in fact you do not exist at all. everything is one long stretch of silence punctuated by jerks. which should be kind of funny, because every memory he has of taka makes him seem so practiced. 

speaking of memory. he has so many. 

they don’t “flood”. that’s another thing he’s seen - that when you get temporary amnesia, it will all come back to you in chronological order. it’s kind of gross for him to think about every memory montage that ends with some guy running to some girl and kissing her at the end because when he follows that train of thought to the last stop he certainly has a lot of memories and they involve running and they involve kissing and they involve kiyotaka and he is aware that he didn’t have any of these until he woke up and saw white. they are both new information and old. 

worse. worse, worse, worse. it’s worse that for the past however many days they’ve been here he’s acted like such a tool. lining up for his execution he thought about how taka blamed himself for mondo’s actions and mondo thought about how funny-but-not-funny-haha it was that if he  _had_  actually let kiyotaka into his life earlier he might have learned something about self-control. not that it was taka’s job to teach him things he should have learned long ago, learned from his first five hundred mistakes, but it couldn’t have hurt to know.

he feels something crawling on his back, like when people make spiders of their hands to tickle and scare you. he never liked it at age 13, and he doesn’t like it any more now that he’s dead. 

there’s something in his head about kiyotaka running his hands through his hair because he’d let it stay down out of the shower, and taka told him it suited him and he told taka he’d better not tell anyone else about it. and then he’d laughed, a lot different from how he laughs now, because only mondo could hear him. 

right now, the real kiyotaka, the alive kiyotaka who doesn’t remember the things he does, is looking at his hands. 

he’s not sitting on the bed, or anything. he’s standing by it, like a toy put up on a shelf so that he can’t be brought down and played with in the middle of the night. just standing there, still in his boots, staring at his hands that are shaking. 

mondo kind of wants to blow him over. he kind of wants to say  _hey, do you remember the first time we held hands, and you apologized because hands were sweaty and you didn’t know how to do it properly, so you kept letting go and trying again and saying it was for ‘practice’ and i pretended to be embarrassed about it?_

but it’s kind of hard to say any of it without a mouth.

taka opens his own mouth, but no sound comes out.

* * *

makoto is probably trying to help. it’s hard to really tell anything when he has to see it all from over taka’s shoulder, but his consciousness swings around wildly and he doesn’t get to direct where it’s aimed. he wants to get a good look at taka’s face, but at the same time he’s afraid to. everyone who catches a glimpse of it looks away in guilt, and if mondo could still talk he’d call them cowards.

no one but makoto actually makes an effort. 

all in all, mondo feels something like blurred surprise that taka even bothered to leave his room. hours passed with him just breathing, not making a noise or even crying. he moved, eventually, from standing by his bed to sitting next to it, never on it. to mondo’s knowledge, he never slept, just stared at the walls in grief until it was time to meet everyone for breakfast.

he didn’t change his clothes, and he doesn’t eat. mondo remembers it with flashbacks to pets he’s loved that slunk away to a corner and starved themselves at the end of their life. and it’s getting worse still that he can see what ishimaru is doing, but a, no one else seems to care, and b, there is not a damn thing he can do now to stop it. 

the whole class is gone for about fifteen minutes when he stands up and walks back to his room, his boots making echoes of the floor. 

* * *

“i wish you’d talk to me”. 

it’s the first thing taka says in more than 48 hours. there is elation somewhere beneath the surface where he still has experiences he can’t physically interact with. his voice is strained and thick from overuse and tears. mondo was such an idiot to ever think he’d want him to stop talking. it’s karma.

if he really tries, he can move his point of view enough to see taka’s face. his eyes are pointed at his lap, his knees drawn up to his head and his arms on his legs. it’s not a comfortable position. he can’t remember what it feels like to wear the same set of clothes for two days straight but he knows it can’t possibly feel good. 

“i know you’re there.” 

worse and worse and worse. is any part of this what mondo wanted? had he wanted to stick around and watch over taka, like he could keep him out of trouble?

bringing pain to people, even in death. yeah, that sounds like him.

he feels like he’s sliding off to the left and tries to hold himself in place so he can watch as taka pulls his head slowly, eyes staring at nothing. 

the hands on his back start to take shape, from restless blobs into restless fingers.

* * *

when taka hears about alter ego, mondo can practically feel the manic energy vibrating off of him. 

there’s a kind of danger in the false hope. he’d like to think that taka doesn’t know it’s there. he’s so cautious in everything he does, in the way mondo remembers him buttoning up his jacket every morning, and rebuttoning it every time he stood up, folding out the creases from sitting or laying down. every habit he’d instilled had been an effort of manual programming. 

mondo remembers hating it the same way he remembers loving it: small moments, built up over time. and it takes a good deal of time to establish standards, but not much time at all to burn them to the ground.

he thinks and he shouts with as much force as he can,  _don’t go_. and for now, taka listens.

* * *

there is something rotten in the state of denmark. 

mondo remembers reading hamlet. a play about a teenage boy who has seen so much tragedy that he starts to slip. attempts are made on his life, even by his friends. he sees ghosts everywhere. his personality fractures into something barely resembling the person he used to be. in short, he doesn’t cope.

what mondo remembers most is discussing this play first year and ishimaru being very loud in his opinions. the question had only been, were the ghosts real? toko said it didn’t matter, taka said it did. she said they only existed as a rule of symbolism. taka said denmark needed better mental health services. 

that was like him. that was like him  _then_. but he knows ghosts are real now.

* * *

he gets another note under his door, slipped in the middle of the night when he has, for once, taken at least his shirt off. he hasn’t eaten in at least four days, and it’s starting to show.

“i think i’m starting to remember something,” he says to the ceiling. 

the note passes under at some point in time he thinks is after midnight. and he reads that too-good handwriting and mondo knows that it’s hiro’s, but he also knows from over two years with the guy that he has never figured out a damn thing in his life and he never will. this is a trap, and he whispers to taka because he figures it doesn’t need to be said,  _don’t go_.

and taka, this time, doesn’t listen. 

* * *

when things flood, and they do this time, it’s like everything just behind where his ears should be is screaming. he’s known that he can’t stop this, and has felt fists grabbing full hold of his back and tugging. but his grip on ishimaru is other-worldly. he wouldn’t stay here for anything else, and he’s not leaving until he absolutely must. 

what is forming into his head as he’s standing half-there between ‘existing’ and ‘not’ a pounding that just goes  _worse, worse, worse_. he can hear it, now, clocks ticking and footsteps and when he tries to grab ishimaru’s hand to make him look at what’s coming for him he hears that same wheezing out-of-breath laughter no one else but him ever has, or ever will, get to know. 

he wouldn’t tell anyone if they asked, but: kiyotaka ishimaru goes out with a smile.


End file.
